10 best cooking games in 2026: Culinary stories to co-op chaos

Cooking games use familiar mechanics to create trials that range from chopping and blending to running your own restaurant. The best cooking video games can have relaxing mechanics and atmosphere, or the complete opposite, with appliances bursting into flames and orders needing to be fulfilled as quickly as possible.

Despite existing since the early 80s, they’ve proven to be a recipe for success. The best cooking games continue to evolve the formula by bringing new ideas to the table and breathing new life into the genre.

Best cooking games

We’ve ranked the top cooking games to play right now, from hectic kitchen challenges to peaceful food preparation, and even notable foodie narratives.

10. Toca Kitchen 2 / Toca Boca Jr

Once a standalone game, Toca Kitchen 2 is now part of the Toca Boca Jr app and is one of the best cooking games on mobile because of its opportunities for creativity. The gameplay offers freedom to make weird and wonderful dishes with no constraints. Have you ever wanted to boil a salad or deep fry a watermelon? Now you can, but the colorful characters you serve this kind of food to may have a less-than-pleasant response. If you want a game with no restrictions, Toca Kitchen 2 is a wholesome way to pass the time for kids and imaginative adults alike.

9. Battle Chef Brigade

In Battle Chef Brigade, you play as two chefs, but there’s more than just cooking to participate in. Chefs from across the world of Victusia battle for a spot in a high-stakes competition. To become a Brigadier, you need to hunt monsters using various attacks and prepare ingredients you collect in puzzle-based cooking challenges. Then, serve up winning dishes worthy of being put in front of a panel of judges. This top cooking game remains fresh with additional game modes beyond the campaign, including Daily Cook-Off and Survival mode leaderboards, Restaurant Rush, and Break the Dishes.

8. Good Pizza, Great Pizza

Calling all pizza chefs, or at least ones who want to run a cozy virtual pizzeria. Knead dough, take custom orders, and serve slices of your creations to over 300 customers brimming with personality. It’s possible to upgrade your shop, place decorations around your space, and follow a story consisting of five different chapters with five chefs to beat. Good Pizza, Great Pizza is one of the best cooking games on PC and Switch because there are over a million pizza order combinations, offering variety and replayability amid soothing soundscapes that run throughout the game.

7. Cook, Serve, Delicious

We’re switching gears to Cook, Serve, Delicious, which adopts a frantic and challenging atmosphere. The gameplay centers around taking your restaurant from a one-star venue to a luxury five-star dining experience. The game has 30 different dishes to cook, and you can make upgrades to individual foods to add new ingredients, increase menu prices, and, in turn, increase the difficulty. There are even in-game events to keep tabs on, such as the weather, that will have an effect on the popularity of your menu. The fast-paced nature of Cook, Serve, Delicious can be shared with others, making for one of the best cooking games to play with friends. You can play the entire campaign in local multiplayer. There’s Tag-Team, Endurance mode, and Strike challenges available in local multiplayer, too.

6. Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator

Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator has everything you could want from a cooking and management simulator. Customize your kitchen and equipment, organize your team, and manage suppliers to get the highest quality ingredients. Set your menu around classic dishes from all kinds of international cuisines, manage all steps of food preparation, and even track your finances. The ultimate goal is to earn prestigious stars from the Michelin Guide and become the finest establishment in town. Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator is one of the best cooking games to play if you want to be involved in cooking dishes while also managing every other aspect of your business. 

5. Venba

Venba is a short but memorable game that places you in the shoes of a mother who immigrated from India to Canada with her family in the 1980s. Cook various dishes inspired by South Asian cuisine and solve puzzles to restore lost recipes. What makes Venba a must-play cooking game is the narrative of a first-generation immigrant that spans decades and touches on themes of family, love, loss, and self-acceptance. The warm, cartoonish art style in Venba makes the vibrant dishes look even more delicious, so it’s lucky that once you’ve cooked them in-game, you can try recreating them in real life using the in-game cookbook.

4. Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe 

Moving on from whipping up traditional restaurant meals, Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe tasks you with taking orders and serving sundae treats at Papa’s famous freezeria as a one-person army. You will do everything from pouring ice cream, adding requested syrups, blending sundaes, and finishing off your ice-cold creation with whipped cream and toppings. Customers rate the sundae using a percentage, based on whether the correct ingredients were used, how evenly the ingredients are distributed over the sundae, the amount of spillage, and wait time. There’s a lot to juggle in all areas of the restaurant, and time isn’t on your side. Celebrate holidays on the quirky island with new seasonal sundaes and even hire a food truck to expand your profits. Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe is one of the best cooking games on PC because of its addictive gameplay loop that’ll have you thinking, “just one more day.”

3. Cooking Simulator

Cooking Simulator is among the best cooking video games because it’s by far the most realistic. There are over 80 recipes — some more complex than others — lifelike ingredients, perks, and skills to unlock along the way. What makes Cooking Simulator stand out is the advanced cooking mechanics and realistic physics. Ingredients respond to your actions in the way you’d expect in real life. Whether you’re climbing the ranks to become a famous chef or leaving the rules at the door in sandbox mode, there are batches of cooking fun to be had.

2. PlateUp!

For mayhem with up to four players, PlateUp! is one of the greatest multiplayer cooking games for building and running a restaurant, making dishes, and serving customers. As a roguelite game, expect many twists and challenges to adapt to. If you play with friends, you can each take on specific roles, whereas mastering automation is your friend when playing solo. PlateUp! is the best cooking game on Steam because of the extensive mod support on the platform, offering interesting gameplay modifiers and endless replayability. 

1. Overcooked 2

Overcooked 2 builds on its predecessor to create not only the best co-op cooking game but an unforgettable experience for anyone with a culinary streak. This time, you’ll be in the kitchen fending off the hunger of The Unbread with your team to get the highest score in frantic local and online multiplayer. You’ll travel the overworld map, cooking all kinds of recipes in evolving kitchens, as you move from one high-pressure situation to the next. If you’ve always wanted to take part in Hell’s Kitchen and shout orders at your friends while everything around you descends into a burning pit of chaos, Overcooked 2 is exactly that.